I am a PhD student at the Max Planck Institute for Informatics in Saarbrücken, supervised by Prof. Dr. Bernt Schiele and Robin Hesse. My research focuses on the explainability of foundation models — understanding their internal representations — and on leveraging insights from explainable AI (XAI) for downstream benefits in computer vision and beyond.

I hold a M.Sc. in Autonomous Systems and Robotics and a B.Sc. in Business Information Systems, both from TU Darmstadt. During my studies I spent an exchange semester at ETH Zurich & University of Zurich, and I was a scholarship holder of the Konrad Zuse School of Excellence in Learning and Intelligent Systems (ELIZA).

News

July 2026
Attending ICML 2026 in Seoul, Korea.
April 2026
I started my PhD!
Mar 2026
Jan 2026
Our paper "Beyond Accuracy" was accepted at TMLR 2026 and received a Featured Certification!
Oct 2025
Started my research internship at the Max Planck Institute for Informatics in Saarbrücken, working on my master's thesis.
Mar 2025
Joined the Konrad Zuse School of Excellence ELIZA as a graduate student and scholarship holder.
Feb 2025
Started my exchange semester at ETH Zurich & University of Zurich.

Publications

Interpretability Without Tradeoffs: Disentangling Polysemanticity At Equal Predictive Performance

Doğukan Bağcı, Bernt Schiele, Simone Schaub-Meyer, Jonas Fischer, Robin Hesse
arXiv 2026

Beyond Accuracy: What Matters in Designing Well-Behaved Models?

Robin Hesse*, Doğukan Bağcı*, Bernt Schiele, Simone Schaub-Meyer, Stefan Roth
* Equal contribution
TMLR 2026 Featured Certification

Awards & Honors

2026
Featured Certification — TMLR, for "Beyond Accuracy: What Matters in Designing Well-Behaved Models?"
2025
Zuse School ELIZA Scholarship — Konrad Zuse School of Excellence in Learning and Intelligent Systems
2023
Deutschlandstipendium — National Scholarship, Germany
2022
Deutschlandstipendium — National Scholarship, Germany
2021
Deutschlandstipendium — National Scholarship, Germany